Sonos’ Ace Ultra headphones have arrived, the review of them is up, and I think they’re pretty terrific. They’re an improvement over the original Ace, and debatably, the headphones Sonos should have launched out of the gate.
But who gets things right the first time? Sonos went back to the board, and rather than re-do the headphones, it seems they decided to improve in areas where it was needed most, but also not mess with things that were working the first time around.
So now the Ace Ultra are a much more of an all-rounder, a better conceived and convincing pair of wireless headphones that are competitive against the best the market has to offer. Before the headphones were announced, when rumours were swirling around what it was going to be, I felt that Sonos needed to lean into more of its identity – it needed to embrace what makes Sonos, Sonos.
The one area all reviewers thought the headphones came up short was in the connectivity department; they didn’t realise the potential of the Sonos ecosystem. With the Headphone Linking feature, that potential has now been realised, and it’s a pretty impressive piece of technology that differentiates Sonos from the competition and becomes a unique selling point of the Ace Ultra.
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It’s kinda magic
During IFA 26, Sonos set up an area to preview the products ahead of the announcement, and I was invited along to listen to presentations and demos of the Sonos Ace Ultra as well as the Beam Ultra. As you may know, with the introduction of the Sonos27 AI platform, Sonos has laid out its future, and the potential for customisation and personalisation within the system is large.
But the feature I think we all wanted to see was Headphone Linking, and it might seem a nebulous feature at first. After all, who would care that much about swapping music from a speaker to a headphone?
You could just call up the app on your device and do it yourself, but if there’s one advantage (or two) that AI can bring, it’s automation and efficiency. If I want to do something, I don’t want multiple steps to go through – keeping it simple means less confusion and most likely less frustration. I want ease of use and accessibility, not having to eventually go online and search for a solution to what I’m not doing right.
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With the Headphone Linking, that’s what you get. A simple means of extracting music from one place to another, and it can work very well. I’ve played music on one speaker, cast it to the headphones, walked to another room and then directed the music to a speaker in that room. It’s pretty simple thanks to a press of the Content Key button.
The versatility of the system that I can start playing music on a speaker or a soundbar, and then if I feel like it, cast it to the headphones and vice versa for a session of private listening, and the flexibility it offers is a boon to those who want some time to themselves.
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However, you may have noticed that I wrote it “can” work very well, but not always.
It’s still in Early Access
You opt into Headphone Linking; it’s not a feature that’s provided out of the box. It’s part of Sonos’ Early Access program, which should clue you into the thought that it’s still somewhat in Beta/Alpha stage rather than something for the public to fully enjoy without reservations.
I’ve found it to be slightly slow in recognising which speakers are close by and where to send the audio, but I did find it became quicker; the system seemed to understand what speakers were where and therefore was faster to recognise and send audio. But of course, it’s not perfect.
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On other occasions, it’s been stumped by what it needs to do; the headphones don’t receive audio after multiple tries before suddenly working. Something I mentioned in my review is that if you have two speakers close by, it can send it to the speaker you didn’t intend to. I’ve walked into a room playing music, pressed the Content Key, only to accidentally receive the audio from the Beam Ultra. Whoops.
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It’s also a Wi-Fi-enabled system, so don’t go thinking that if you’re wearing the headphones you can take audio from a speaker and merrily leave the house with your tunes playing in your head. I’ve tried walking into the garden and found that the signal extinguishes quickly because I’m on the Wi-Fi, and all of this is happening on the mesh network that Sonos creates.
There is potential
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So while it’s not fully ready for its time in the spotlight, Headphone Linking provides an interesting perspective on what could come next. I’m not sure where it could lead – perhaps with Sonos Voice I can talk into the headphones and start a routine somewhere in the house if it’s all linked into a smart system, but certainly there is potential beneath all this interlinking of devices.
For now, we’ve got the TV/Audio Swap, which works really well, and the TrueCinema feature, which is surprisingly effective – there are times when I wonder whether sound is coming from the soundbar, the effect feels so spacious. The implementation of head tracking is also a nice feature, and these are features that other headphones have tried but haven’t put together as well as Sonos has.
With the Headphone Linking feature, Sonos has an ace up its sleeve. We’ll see how it plays its hand as the feature and Sonos ecosystem develops, but right now, the future looks very interesting.